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Frosting Cupcakes: Once baked & cooled, you
can have so much fun frosting cupcakes!
Here are my three favorite ways to frost them:
Smooth Cupcake Frosting: The easiest way to
frost a cupcake smooth is to put your frosting
in a microwave-safe bowl and microwave it a bit (maybe start with
15 seconds) to make it slightly melty (like the
consistency of Ranch dressing). Then hold your
cupcake upside down, and dip the top into the
frosting, swirling it around until all edges are
covered. Swirl the cupcake as you lift it up and
place in ‘fridge to harden. The effect is
a smooth & shiny frosting. If your
frosting is too runny (like chocolate syrup), do
not dip your cupcake in unless you want to it
look like a glaze (slightly see-thru and runny).
Simply wait until your frosting has hardened up
a bit in the bowl and try again. Trust me, I’ve
made the messes for you.
High-Swirl Cupcake Frosting: The
High-Swirl will look like a bakery-style
frosting (or like a soft-serve ice-cream swirl),
and is super simple. Use your star tip, or
a large plain hole tip for a smoother look, and squeeze the frosting
out around the edge of the cupcake and in
consecutively smaller circles as you build it up. Just
keep going until you get the height you like.
Please know, it takes a ton of frosting to use
this method, and sometimes works best with large
cupcakes as they likely have a rounded top
already so will make your frosting swirl look
higher.
Grass-covered Cupcake Frosting: Using your
grass-tip (my new favorite tip and one of the
few I use any chance I get!), just squeeze or
dot the frosting out onto the cupcake. The
tip has multiple holes, so you can make the top
of the cupcake look like grass (think of the
possibilities...Easter cupcakes, garden
cupcakes, soccer cupcakes, golf cupcakes, bug
cupcakes, cupcakes with hair...too fun!).
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Decorating Cupcakes:
Decorating cupcakes is super fun, so here goes
(my cupcake pictures are all on the left)...
Fondant Daisy cupcakes: The pictures of
the Gerbera daisy cupcakes are from my brother’s
wedding and I was so excited to make them,
especially because I just love my brother & his
now wife to pieces. These cupcakes were a
journey as I had never really worked with
fondant before, had to find a way to do 100
cupcakes for a wedding in New Jersey while I
lived in Chicago and had an 8 week old baby to
boot. So I’ll say it again, if I could do
it, so can you! For the fondant daisy’s
(see Decorating FAQ’s for more detail & pics), I
simply bought white Wilton fondant, colored it
as desired and rolled it out to 1/8 inch thick.
Then I used the Wilton daisy cutter and cut 2
large daisy shapes and 1 small daisy shape.
I re-rolled the cut-outs gently just to lose the
‘just cut’ look. I then used a tooth-pick to
press a line along each side of each petal and
one line down the middle of each petal.
Using a tiny bit of water ( I just dipped my
finger in a cup with water and then spread it on
the fondant), I stacked one large daisy on
another large daisy and then repeated with the
small size on top. I then rolled a small ball in
green colored fondant and put it in the middle
(‘gluing’ it with the water from my finger) and
pressed in gently so it was a bit flattened. I
then put the entire daisy in a flattened out
cupcake liner and allowed to dry. I
frosted the cupcakes with the Smooth Cupcake
frosting (see above for directions) and when the
daisy’s were hardened, I then placed a dollop of
frosting on top of the cupcake and added the
Daisy! And if you’d like to know how I
managed the cross-country trip, just send me an
e-mail and I'll give you the whole scoop!
Mini-heart cupcakes:
These are mini-cupcakes (I
have a mini-cupcake baking pan) made with
chocolate cake and frosted with vanilla
buttercream. I used the High-Swirl Cupcake
frosting (see above for directions) added a
little candy heart on top (no, I did not make
this one but bought it at the store). The
mini-cupcakes were so cute and were a big hit
for the Bunco night...just the right bite-size
of Yum!
Construction cupcakes: These are medium sized
cupcakes frosted with the High-Swirl Cupcake
frosting (see above for directions). I used
yellow frosting and actually used paper
construction signs to decorate. Now, while
ideally everything would be edible on my cakes
sometimes I need to use ‘mixed-media’. For this
one, I went on-line and found some pictures of
construction signs. I copied them into
PowerPoint, shrunk them to the size preferred
and copied them in as many multiples as I
needed. Then I printed them out on Photo paper
and simply cut them out and stuck them into the
frosting (let your frosting harden up in the
refrigerator before you stick them in).
The Photo paper is coated so it doesn’t droop in
the frosting and the ink won’t run...it’s super
cool and I use this method on lots of funny
cakes & cupcakes. The kids LOVED the
construction signs!
Noah’s Ark cupcakes: For these, I used
the same process as with the Construction
cupcakes (above) using medium cupcakes, swirled
high with frosting, topped with little cut-outs
of animals that I got from pictures on-line
(look into free clip-art and you’d be amazed by
what you can find for free!). For this
cupcake tower though, I made a Noah’s ark to put
on the top tier, and then filled the lower tiers
with cupcakes. The Ark cake was super
simple. Just bake 2 8x8 cakes and after
cooled, filled & stacked cut into an ark shape
(like a diamond) and frost with chocolate
frosting. Then frost two graham cracker
squares and let harden in ‘fridge. Once
your frosting is set-up, place the graham
crackers on the top of the boat like a tent.
Viola, a totally cute ark!
Soccer cupcakes: I used medium sized
cupcakes, frosted with Grass-covered cupcake
frosting (see above for directions). Then
I created the soccer balls from chocolate as
follows: I covered a cookie sheet in saran
wrap and melted some Wilton white chocolate
using the bag’s direction. Once runny, I used a
spoon to dollop out a large circle of chocolate
and swirled it around to create the soccer ball
shape (keep the chocolate about 1/4 inch thick).
Once the ball is hardened in the ’fridge, I used
black frosting to pipe on the soccer ball
design, and inserted the chocolate ball into the
cupcake. My team thought these were
AWESOME!
Sweet Daisy cupcakes: I used medium sized
cupcakes (does anyone see a trend here) and
frosted each one smooth with the Smooth Cupcake
Frosting (see directions above) in the desired
color. For the daisy, I simply piped it on
in white, piped a yellow circle in the middle
and added a few large yellow sprinkle in the
middle for some 3-D effect. Totally cute
and I've made these not only for little girl
parties, but for some big girls parties too (you
know who you are-Happy 40th!).
Color Swirl cupcakes: To make bakery
style cupcakes where the frosting is swirled
with color, you need to use a color stripe
technique. Stripe your frosting bag with 3
colors (just use a knife dipped in the Wilton
frosting coloring and spread it in a line from
the tip to top of the inside of your frosting
bag in 3 separate lines in the bag), fill with
white frosting and swirl it on your cupcake. The
coloring will swirl onto the frosting as you
pipe it on! Note: As you use up your
frosting, you will likely need to re-stripe,
which is bit messy, but the effect is worth it
(to avoid the mess, just plan on using more than
one bag when frosting these cupcakes!).
Fruit covered cupcakes: A delicious and
indulgent cupcake look is to just slop the
frosting on the cupcake nice and thick and then
cover each cupcake in various fruits
(strawberries, blueberries, raspberries,
blackberries, etc.) It makes for a berry
delicious and berry beautiful display!
-Spider Web cupcakes: These cupcakes are
just perfect for Halloween (obviously!) and I
made them for a school party. I simply made 36
cupcakes, used the smooth frosting technique
above for a smooth shiny, orange frosting and
piped on a spider web in black frosting.
Finally, I stuck a spider ring in each cupcake,
putting each ring at a different angle for a
really custom and homemade look for the
cupcakes. They were a huge hit!
Spider
Web cupcakes: These cupcakes
are just perfect for Halloween (obviously!) and
I made them for a school party. I simply made 36
cupcakes, used the smooth frosting technique
above for a smooth shiny, orange frosting and
piped on a spider web in black frosting.
Finally, I stuck a spider ring in each cupcake,
putting each ring at a different angle for a
really custom and homemade look for the
cupcakes. They were a huge hit!
Snow White’s Dwarves cupcakes: To
compliment a Princess Doll cake based on the
Snow White character, I used these great Dwarves
cupcakes. I simply made 24 cupcakes (only
7 are shown here), used the high swirl frosting
in yellow to match her skirt and inserted a
Dwarf cut-out (cut-outs created by simply Googling ‘Snow White’s Seven Dwarves’ images,
and found some simple images that I copied into
PowerPoint, shrunk to size desired, ~3 inches,
and cut out!). The birthday girl was so
thrilled to see Snow White & the Seven Dwarves
for her birthday and even more thrilled she got
to eat them!
Train cupcakes: For my son’s two year
birthday, I used the Williams & Sonoma train
cupcake pan to make a Cupcake Train Set (I
rarely if ever use mold pans, but this one I got
as a gift and it is fun). This Train
cupcake set is another great idea for those
tight on time as once the cupcakes are baked,
virtually no time is needed to decorate. I named
it the Candy Express and he thought it was so
AWESOME! I made the train cupcakes in
chocolate cake and then used all types of candy
to decorate (M&Ms and Skittles, gummy lifesavers
for the wheels and licorice for the tracks).
I used vanilla buttercream to hold the candy on
& stripe the engine and cars. I also used Keebler Elf cookies and stood them up as people
waving at the train. And while the cake
was yummy, I’ll admit that the kids just ate the
candy...I swear they hardly even touched the
cake and went straight for the goodies! :)
Sock Monkey cupcakes: These are medium sized
cupcakes frosted with the High-Swirl Cupcake
frosting (see above for directions). I used white
vanilla buttercream, and used the coloring
striping technique for the color swirl. See the
color swirl cupcake above for details on this
simple but fun technique! After frosted, I used ‘mixed-media’
for the sock monkeys. I went on-line and found
an image of a sock monkey. I copied it into
PowerPoint, shrunk it to the size preferred
(~3x3 inches) and copied them in as many multiples as I
needed. Then I printed them out on Photo paper
and simply cut them out and stuck them into the
frosting (let your frosting harden up in the
refrigerator before you stick them in).
The Photo paper is coated so it doesn’t droop in
the frosting and the ink won’t run...it’s super
cool and I use this method on lots of funny
cakes & cupcakes. The girls LOVED the
little monkeys!
Banana Chocolate
cupcake: These cupcakes
were made simply because I had invited people
over for breakfast and had nothing to
serve....good thing I have cakes around these
days! These are medium sized cupcakes made from
yellow cake batter swirled with melted chocolate
(see Recipes for how
to swirl cake batter flavors). To make
these cupcakes, I took the cupcake out of the
liner, sliced it in half lengthwise and then
placed the bottom slice back in the liner. I
then placed 4 or 5 banana slices on the bottom
layer, and placed the top cupcake layer back on
(like a sandwich). Next, I heated up some
chocolate fudge frosting (from a tub) in the
microwave until it was warm and runny, and
poured it over each cupcake (See
Decorating for full
directions). Serve these cupcakes with a fork,
and you will love them (I actually remade them
for my husband for dessert too)! And yes, this
is a Jennycakes original!
Sugared Fruit cupcake: This
cupcake tower looked so gorgeous with the
sugared fruit...what a cake event! It was
actually pretty simple as long as you plan for
it. In advance, make your sugared fruit using
whatever fruit you like best (use fruit with a
peel, like plums, and see
Decorating FAQs for full directions). These
cupcakes were medium sized, and used yellow
cake. I frosted them using the Smooth Frosting
technique (see above) with vanilla buttercream.
Once frosted, I added a shell border around each
cupcake to match the cake. Next, I placed a
piece or more of sugared fruit on each cupcake.
For details on the cake on the top of the tower,
please see the
Bakery Gallery. This cupcake tower
goes for any occasion and looks very special!
Enjoy!
Bionicle Cupcake: Ok, you
see the cupcake with the big action figure toy
on top...the one that looks like it's ready to
battle you for the cupcake tower (& could kick
your patooty in the process). Yeah, that's my
son's idea of an awesome cupcake tower. He just
wanted me to frost up the cupcakes and then he
had a blast sticking the guys all over the
cupcake tower! It was such a blast watching him
have fun & knowing that the cupcake tower was
like a real live battleground for him! Too
fun & I highly encourage you to let your kids go
crazy. It's fun playing with your
food...especially when it's cupcakes!
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